Levi's Daughter
by a-stranger-angel
Summary: AU In which Levi has a daughter who dies on a mission, covers Levi dealing with his grief.


When Levi's daughter dies Erwin is sure they've lost him for good. Everyone gives him a wide berth, Levi had always been quiet but no one had ever seen him like this before.

Her body was nondescript, wrapped in the white sheets they carried for every mission and tucked into the back of the wagon with the rest of the dead. This time there were a lot of them, it had been one of the toughest expeditions since the attack of the female titan decades before.

It had been Isabel's first.

Levi walked alongside the wagon and didn't say anything. He didn't cry. Didn't do anything, quiet he acted like any other mission retreat, Erwin watched him from the corner of the eye as he knocked an anonymous man's hand back onto the wagon after a particularly bad bump jolted it out. He was casual. Too casual. No one said anything. The air around the wagon was even more solemn than usual, while the death rate was high it was still rare to lose someone on their first go, what with all the senior members of the squad keeping an eye out as the recruits got their feet wet in the field. The death of a new recruit was always felt, rippling through the squad, but the death of Isabel was felt harder, many had seen the girl grow up from a wild eyed child, so fearless and so like Hange, the girl's mother that everything felt all the more tragic. She had made them sloppy birthday cakes, cheered them as they returned from their mission, and reminded them exactly why they did what they did. That bright eyed children like that made each sacrifice meaningful just because it meant that just maybe someday they would be able to play out on the other side of the wall, that the species could go on, that the world could be safe for humanity again.

Levi looked unshaken and that was the most unsettling of all. He had been an adoring, if over protective, father, something most of the squad would never have imagined from his hardened exterior, but around the child he had lit up. The world revolved around her, with her gone they expected him to rail to lash out, to do something, anything, but he had yet to even notice that the titan who had cut down his child, and the last person he had on earth, had gotten away. Yes, he had Erwin, but Erwin wasn't a person. Erwin was the call of duty in flesh, he wasn't who Levi went to to get away from the smoke of the funeral pyre at the end of a mission.

They made it through the gates of the wall and the border town without event, everyone breathing a sigh of relief as the crowd seemed to sense there was more going on than an even more sparse set of survivors than usual and kept quiet, letting the pale, drawn faces through without injury or added insult. Everyone was grateful to see their fortress rise before them, hoping to shake off the day, even just for a moment. Levi led the wagon to the pyre, ignoring calls from the men and Erwin's firm hand on his shoulder as he began to throw the corpses on the fire one by one like pieces of kindling, never pausing to take a last glimpse at a familiar face or to search out his daughter from the mass. White sheet and blood stain covered figure blending into white sheet and blood stain covered figure until the wagon was empty.

He didn't say goodbye, just turned on his heel, leaving the horse and burden to someone else's care and walked into the fortress, heading straight for Isabel's room in the section of the fortress that had been reserved for Levi and his family, now just for Levi.

He starts to clean everything. Throwing open windows, dusting, muttering. Didn't he always tell her to keep her things picked up? Didn't he always remind her to dust? Didn't he say to line up everything in their drawers and on their shelves, not strewn across the floor in an order only she seemed to be able to understand? Didn't he tell her to keep her canisters full, her gear in working order, her uniforms neat?

As the weeks went on so did his mutters, just barely loud enough for Erwin to hear as he stood on the other side of the door trying to coax his friend out. Levi was beyond hearing.

Hadn't he told her to hang back? Hadn't he told her to take it easy? That titan had been so big, so big. Hadn't he tried to convince her not to enlist? Hadn't he tried to get her to stay back here where it was safe?

No one dares to mention that she was just trying to make him proud. No one mentions she was just as reckless as her mother. No one mentions how much she wanted to be just like him. No one has the heart.

His own room dissolves into dust and streaked windows, Erwin stops commenting about it. Occasionally Jean makes a comment about how Levi seems to have given in to the ruin, made friends with the spiders, but then Eren reminds him about Marco and he goes quiet. When Mikasa takes his place and his record, Erwin shoves that note under his door, praying an appeal to the man's pride will be enough to shake him free - it doesn't. He thinks about submitting the death toll, which has gone up since Levi had locked himself away, but thinks better of it. The last thing the man needs is more death on his shoulders, more to blame himself for.

Levi had already grown quieter since Hange, but it only gets worse now as he refuses to leave his daughter's room. Refuses most days to eat even what they try to leave food outside the door for him. Erwin whispers something about Levi's sister and Isabel's namesake's death, how hard he took that, but he doesn't have to mention Hange's - everyone remembers that all too vividly.

Hange had been plugging away gleefully at her experiments, dissecting the neck matter carefully around the spine of one particularly irate captured titan, trying to see if every titan had a little human inside, if they could save the titan, restore humanity, when the ropes snapped, the titan's hand clapping to the back of it's neck as it howled in agony, gripping her tightly, she didn't have on any of her gear, no weapon, nothing. Just a surprised look for a moment before her chest caved in from the brute's grip, his teeth bearing down on her neck. He was taken down immediately, but that wasn't enough to bring Hange back.

They all remembered Isabel crying in Levi's arms as he held her in front of the pyre. Promised everything was going to be ok. That daddy was there. That daddy would never let anything happen to her, that a big, bad titan would never touch her. He'd been stony faced then, too.

He didn't go on a mission for a year and a half, and when he finally did he was more ruthless, reckless, than anyone ever remembered him being. He sliced through everything in his path - a man with a death wish that looked like the cries of every woman he'd ever loved.

After that Erwin decided Levi'd had enough, put him somewhere safe. He sent Levi to the capital as a scout paper-pusher, too afraid to lose his right hand man to his own devastation. There Levi began to waste away, drowning in reports, death tolls, condolence letters to all the families of the deceased and missing in action. Lists of names and unending sacrifices sending him spiraling farther and farther into himself, into madness, until he disappeared altogether. Slinking back into the underbelly of the city he crouched in his shadows, became an urban legend.

Her soft breaths in the crib, cooing from the next room once sounded like scripture, but now the world went silent, hanging on the last high note of her scream, her last word eerily echoing her first - daddy!


End file.
